Hawk's Nest

Thursday, June 26, 2003

Pandora's box was opened today by 6 Supreme Court Justices. The box is called Lawrence v. Texas. Three justices including the Chief Justice, tried to keep the lid shut but were unsuccessful. They saw what their colleagues did not. Justice Scalia's dissent describes the escaping woes:
The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are “immoral and unacceptable,” Bowers, supra, at 196—the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity. Bowers held that this was a legitimate state interest. The Court today reaches the opposite conclusion. The Texas statute, it says, “furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual,” ante, at 18 (emphasis added). The Court embraces instead JUSTICE STEVENS’ declaration in his Bowers dissent, that “the fact that thegoverning majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice,” ante, at 17. This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation.If, as the Court asserts, the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none of the above-mentioned laws can survive rational basis review.
Mark his words...for we will encounter the harm released here many more times.

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